Status of the CUORE and results from the CUORE-0 neutrinoless double beta decay experiments

CUORE is a 741kg array of TeO 2 bolometers for the search of neutrinoless double beta decay of 130 Te. The detectoris being constructed at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy, where it will start taking data in 2015. If thetarget background of 0.01counts/(keVkgy) will be reached, in five years of data taking CUORE will have a 1˙halflife sensitivity of 10 26 y. CUORE-0 is a smaller experiment constructed to test and demonstrate the performancesexpected for CUORE. The detector is a single tower of 52 CUORE-like bolometers that started taking data in spring2013. The status and perspectives of CUORE will be discussed, and the first CUORE-0 data will be presented.Keywords: Double beta decay, Neutrino mass, Bolometers1. IntroductionNeutrinos are massive particles. A beautiful proof ofthis important property was obtained by neutrino oscil-lation experiments more than a decade ago. Since then,the key role of neutrinoless double beta decay searcheshas been established, as attested by the growing numberof experimental proposals in the last years.Neutrinoless double beta decay ( 0 ) is a proposedvery rare nuclear process in which a nucleus transformsinto its (A,Z+2) isobar with the emission of two elec-trons. While the two neutrino channel ( 2 ) – wheretwo neutrinos are contemporary emitted in the decay – isallowed by the Standard Model of Particle Physics andhas been observed experimentally in a dozen of isotopeswith half-lives of the order 10